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A Bitcoin Standard:
Lessons from the Gold Standard∗
Warren E. Weber
October 2015
Abstract
This paper imagines a world in which countries are on the bitcoin standard, mon-
etary system in which all media of exchange are or are backed by the cryptocurrency
bitcoin. It examines the lessons from the “Classical Gold Standard” period, 1880-1914,
for the bitcoin standard. The paper describes the “rules of the game” that countries
on the gold standard were supposed to follow. It shows how gold points permitted
countries to follow interest rate policies, and it argues that monetary authorities could
act as lenders of last resort because of their ability to issue fiduciary currencies. It
finds that under the gold standard price levels tended to move together and there was
little inflation over the period studied. It also finds that exchange rates were relatively
stable and that there was good real output growth. The paper argues that because
virtually no transactions costs for international transactions, countries could not follow
interest rate policies under the bitcoin standard, although they would still have limited
ability to act as lenders of last resort. Based on this experience during the Classical
Gold Standard period, the paper conjectures that there would be mild deflation, low
nominal interest rates, fixed exchange rates, and good output growth under the bitcoin
standard.
Keywords: gold standard, cryptocurrency, bitcoin
∗
Visiting Scholar, Bank of Canada; Visiting Scholar, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; Adjunct Professor,
University of South Carolina. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Bank of Canada, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, or the Federal Reserve System.
e-mail: weweber@gmail.com I thank Ben Fung, Scott Hendry, Gerald Stuber, and participants at seminars
at the Bank of Canada for useful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
1I am much more confident that the world of payments will look very different 20
years from now than I am about how it will look.
Larry Summers
Wall Street Journal, interview, 30 April, 2014
1 Introduction
There are a myriad of cryptocurrencies in existence today.1 The best known of these
crypto currencies is bitcoin. Bitcoin has been the subject of numerous articles in the media.
It has also been the subject of numerous books and documentaries.
The use of bitcoin has been growing worldwide. According to CoinDesk, as of 14 Septem-
ber 2014, there were slightly approximately 6.56 million bitcoin wallets, 76,000 merchants
who accepted bitcoin payments, and 238 bitcoin ATMs. By 15 September 2015, these
amounts had increased to 11.05 million bitcoin wallets, 106,000 merchants who accepted
bitcoin payments, and 475 bitcoin ATMs. Some merchants that accept bitcoin are Mi-
crosoft, which began accepting bitcoin as payment for games, apps, and videos in December
2014, Dell, which started accepted bitcoin as payment in Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. in
February 2015, DISH Network, and Overstock.com.
In this paper I extrapolate the growth of bitcoin as a medium of exchange and conduct
this thought experiment: Suppose that the use of bitcoin has grown to such an extent that it
has replaced existing fiat currency and has become the predominant medium of exchange or
at least the backing for the predominant medium of exchange in a large group of countries.
I will call this international monetary system in which bitcoin is the common backing for
the various countries’ payments systems as the bitcoin standard. I choose this terminology
because such a monetary system will be similar to the gold standard in many respects. The
gold standard was a monetary system under which countries’ currencies were tied to gold.
My imaginary bitcoin standard is a monetary system under which countries’ currencies are
tied to bitcoin.
There may be some skepticism at this point as to how it could come about that the bitcoin
standard could ever be adopted, even by a single country. A major reason for this skepticism
is the fluctuations in the price of bitcoin relative to the U.S. dollar since its inception in 2009.
The price of bitcoin relative to the dollar from January 2013 is shown in Figure 1. As the
figure shows, bitcoin went from about $13 per bitcoin on 1 January 2013 to a high of almost
$1,150 per bitcoin on 30 November of that year. Thus far during 2015, the price of a bitcoin
has ranged between $175 and $315 with prices centered around $225.
Although the skepticism about whether the bitcoin standard could come into being is
warranted to some extent, it should be remembered that if currencies other than bitcoin
exist under the bitcoin standard, the fluctuations of their prices in terms of bitcoin will be
limited or may be even eliminated because these currencies will be backed by bitcoin. This
is not the case for current fiat currencies vis-a-vis bitcoin. Thus, the current experience with
the price of bitcoin in terms of dollars is not relevant for how goods prices in terms of bitcoin
(the price level in terms of bitcoin) would behave under the bitcoin standard.
1
A cryptocurrency is one in which users come to agreement about changes in the transactions ledger
using cryptographic techniques. In the case of bitcoin, the unique private key associated with every bitcoin
transaction is encrypted.
21200
900
$
per
bitcoin
600
300
0
2013
2014
2015
2016
Figure 1: $ per bitcoin, January 2013 to August 2015
The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical experience with the gold standard
to determine what lessons can be learned about what might be the experience if the bitcoin
standard were to come into existence. The paper proceeds as follows: The basics of the
gold standard are described in section 2. In this section, I discuss the reasons that countries
adopted the gold standard, how exchange rates were determined, and the concept of gold
points In this section, I also discuss how countries conducted monetary policy under the
gold standard and the “rules of the game” countries operating under the gold standard were
supposed to follow. Finally, in this section I examine the historical experience of countries
that operated under the gold standard in terms of price stability, exchange rate stability,
real output growth, and financial crises. In section 3, I describe in more detail the bitcoin
standard and the banking system the would exist under it. I also discuss how monetary
policy could be conducted under the bitcoin standard, and I present my conjectures about
how prices, exchange rates, and real output would behave under the bitcoin standard. Section
4 concludes the paper and gives conjectures and conclusions about how stable the bitcoin
standard would be if it were to come into being.
2 The Gold Standard
The gold standard did not come about as a joint agreement among countries to adopt it.
Rather, it came about over a period of time as one country after another chose to abandon
its silver or bimetallic standard in favor of the gold standard. The reason for the choice of
gold, rather than some other commodity or basket of commodities, as the “anchor” was that
Britain was an extremely important player in the world financial system. It was on the gold
standard, and, perhaps most importantly it had a strong commitment to maintaining the
3gold backing for its currency.
The history of the gold standard was marked by changes over time in the number of
countries that adopted it.2 The origins of the gold standard are usually dated to England
in 1717 “when Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint, set too high a silver price for the
gold guinea.” (Eichengreen and Flandreau, 1985, 4) However, England did not legally adopt
gold as the sole backing for its currency until 1821 with the passage of an act on 2 July 1819
that required the Bank of England to redeem its notes in gold.
Canada adopted a gold backed currency on 14 June 1853 with the passage of the “Act
to regulate the Currency,” which set the value of the Canadian dollar and the Canadian
pound in terms of grains of standard gold. Germany went off of silver and established the
gold based mark in 1871. France and the other countries of the Latin Monetary Union
went off a bimetallic standard for their currencies and adopted gold in 1873.3 The United
States effectively adopted the gold standard on 1 January 1879 with the resumption of
convertibility of U.S. notes into gold, although the gold standard was not officially adopted
until the passage of the Gold Standard Act in 1900.
Because the gold standard was so prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, the period 1880 to 1914 is sometimes referred to as the “Classical Gold Standard”
period. According to Bloomfield (1959), “By the end of the [nineteenth] century nearly all
the leading countries had linked their currencies to gold in one form or another; and many of
the smaller Asiatic and Latin American countries did so in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s”
(14-15). Countries also changed whether or not they were on the gold standard. Again,
according to Bloomfield (1959),
“A number of countries dropped out of the “club” during the course of the period,
such as Argentina (1885), Portugal (1890), Italy (1891), Chile (1898), Bulgaria
(1899), and Mexico (1910); but Argentina, Italy, and Bulgaria returned to gold
. . . in 1900, 1902, 1906” (15).
2.1 Details
Under the gold standard, each country had its own monetary unit. In the United States
it was the dollar; in the United Kingdom, the pound; in Canada, initially both the dollar and
the pound although eventually it became only the dollar. This monetary unit was defined to
consist of a given number of Troy grains or ounces of gold of standard fineness.4 For example,
when Canada went on the Gold Standard in 1853, the Canadian pound was defined to have
101.321 grains of gold and the Canadian dollar was to have one-fourth of that, so that there
were 20.67 Canadian dollars per Troy ounce of gold. The ratio of the monetary unit to the
quantity of gold was known as the “mint price.” There were no restrictions on the importing
or exporting of gold under the Gold Standard.
2
This historical discussion is based on Bloomfield (1959), Frieden (1992), Eichengreen (1992), and Eichen-
green and Flandreau (1997).
3
A bimetallic standard is a monetary system based on both gold and silver. See Redish (2000) for a
discussion of bimetallism and an argument for why bimetallic standards evolved to the gold standard.
4
The difference between a Troy ounce and a avoirdupois ounce is that a Troy ounces is 480 grains,
whereas the avoirdupois ounce is 437-1/2 grains. The standard fineness of gold is 22 24 = 0.9167 karats.
4Coins
There were three widely-used media of exchange in countries on the gold standard. The
first was gold coins.5 Each country had its own mint that would produce gold coins of various
denominations. These mints would accept bullion in unlimited amounts and exchange coins
for bullion.6
Central Bank or Treasury Fiduciary Currency
The second widely-used medium of exchange was fiduciary currency issued by central
banks or government treasuries. Central banks or government treasuries issued (paper)
currencies that were not 100 percent backed by gold, but were tied to gold in some manner.
For example, in the United Kingdom, the Bank of England issued bank notes that had to
be redeemed in a specific amount of gold on demand. In the United States, the Treasury
issued U.S. notes, and later, the Federal Reserve System issued Federal Reserve notes. Both
were redeemable in gold on demand. In Canada, the Treasury issued Dominion notes, which
were also redeemable in gold.
Among the countries that adopted the gold standard, there were differences in the manner
in which their fiduciary currencies were tied to gold. One difference was the nature of the
legal convertibility of the fiduciary currency. In the three countries mentioned above and in
most other countries, the issuer of the fiduciary currency was required to redeem it in gold
on demand. This was not the case in all countries that adopted the gold standard, however.
Some – France is an example – made the legal convertibility of the fiduciary currency the
option of the monetary authority.7
A second difference in the nature of how countries tied their fiduciary currencies to
gold was the required gold backing of the fiduciary currency. Some fiduciary currencies
were fractionally backed. That is, the central bank or treasury issuing the currency had
to gold in given proportion to the currency issued. For example, in the United States, the
Federal Reserve System had to back Federal Reserve notes 40 percent with gold. Other
countries required their fiduciary currencies to be 100 percent backed above some amount
with fractional or no backing of the currencies up to this amount. In Britain, the “Bank
Charter Act 1844” (Peel’s Act) permitted the Bank of England to issue notes up to a specific
amount with no gold backing. However, note issuance above that amount had to be 100
percent backed by gold. Canada first authorized the issuance of fiduciary currency by the
Dominion Notes Act passed in 1868. Under the terms of this Act, the initial issuance of
Dominion Notes was capped at CAD 8 million. The first CAD 5 million had to be 20 percent
backed by gold; the next CAD 3 million, 25 percent backed by gold. Canada changed the
maximum issuance and required backing for Dominion notes over time. By 1913, the first
5
There were also non-gold subsidiary coins, but I ignore them because they are not relevant to the
discussion.
6
That bullion could be brought in in unlimited amounts was known as “free coinage.” It did not mean
that might not be a charge for minting. A mint might change for the cost of coinage (brassage). In addition,
it might change a tax (seigniorage). The result was that persons bringing bullion to a mint might receive
less than that weight in coinage in return.
7
When a country imposed legal convertibility on demand, Bloomfield (1959) refers to it as being on
the “full” gold standard. When convertibility was at the option of the issuer,Bloomfield (1959) refers to a
country as having adopted a “limping” gold standard.
5CAD 30 million had to be 25 percent backed by gold; issuance over CAD 30 million had to
be fully backed by gold.
Commercial Bank Fiduciary Currency
The third widely-used medium of exchange was callable liabilities issued by the private
commercial banking sector. These callable liabilities were redeemable in gold on demand.
The callable liabilities were primarily bank deposits, but in some countries, the United States
and Canada for example, banks also issued bank notes. Banks were not required to fully back
their callable liabilities with gold reserves held either in their vaults or in reserve accounts
with the country’s central bank.
2.2 Reasons for Adoption
With a convertible fiduciary currency some of an economy’s resources are idle because
they must be stored as reserves. One advantage of an inconvertible fiduciary (fiat) currency is
reserves are not needed, so that these resources are available for other uses. The presumption
under a fiat currency regime is that these other uses are productive. However, it could be
the case that the resource are idle because they are being used for non-productive uses, such
as hedging against possible inflation.
Despite this possible advantage of a fiat monetary standard, there was a major concern
that contributed to the adoption of the gold standard. This concern was that under a
fiat monetary standard it would be inevitable that monetary authorities would eventually
end up continually depreciating a country’s money. Linking a country’s money supply to
a commodity like gold would prevent this from occurring. In this way, gold would be an
“anchor” to the monetary system. Requiring convertibility into gold would limit the issuance
of fiduciary currency and help achieve the goal of price level stability. According to Bordo
(1984):
A stable price level in the long run that an automatically operated gold standard
produced, in line with the commodity theory of money, was invariably contrasted
to the evils of inconvertible fiduciary money. At the hands of even well-meaning
policy-makers the latter would inevitably lead to depreciation of the value of
money. (23)
The reasoning follows from the Quantity Theory of Money, which in terms of growth
rates is
∆P = ∆M − ∆Y + ∆V, (1)
where ∆P is the rate of inflation; ∆M , the rate of money growth; ∆Y , the rate of real
output growth; and ∆V , the rate of growth of velocity. The key assumption is that under
the gold standard, ∆M is limited by the rate of growth of a country’s stock of monetary
gold, which is out of the control of its central bank or treasury. As a consequence, the rate of
inflation is also limited. Note that if a country’s output growth outstrips the rate of growth
of its stock of monetary gold, then the county would experience deflation.8
8
This discussion ignores the role of the rate of velocity growth. The implicit assumptions are that ∆V
is not large, does not fluctuate very much, and is not under the influence of the central bank.
6If other countries also adopt the gold standard, then not only would they all avoid
inflation, but their price levels also would be linked through a mechanism known as the
“price-specie flow” mechanism. In fact, the price levels would be more than simply linked.
The price-specie flow mechanism argues that price levels would be equalized across the
countries that have adopted the gold standard.
Two basic ideas underlie the price-specie flow mechanism. The first idea is gold arbitrage:
gold will flow from countries where it has a low degree of purchasing power (where the price
level is high) to the countries where it has a high degree of purchasing power (the price level
is low). The second idea is one stated above: under the gold standard, the money supply
in a country depends on the quantity of gold in that country. Thus, following the Quantity
Theory of Money, the price level in a country increases when it receives gold and declines
when it loses gold.
To see how the price-specie flow mechanism is supposed to work, let there be two coun-
tries, call them Country A and Country B. Let Pj be the price level in country j (monetary
units/good) and Xj be the mint price in country j (monetary units/ounce gold), j = A, B.
Consider an agent who has one ounce of gold. This agent faces the question of where to buy
commodities. If the agent takes the ounce of gold to country A, the ounce of gold is worth
XA units of country A currency, which buys X A
PA
units of goods. If the agent takes the ounce
XB
of gold to country B, the ounce of gold buys PB units of goods.
If X A
PA
> X B
PB
, then the ounce of gold buys more goods in country A than in country B.
According to the price-specie flow mechanism, the result is that gold flows from country B
to country A. Agents want to buy goods where they are the cheapest. This is the gold
arbitrage. The flow of gold into country A increases its money supply, and the flow of gold
out of country B decreases its money supply. And because the price level in a country related
to its money supply, the price level will increase in country A and decrease in country B.
The gold flows, the arbitrage, continues until PA = PB . The price levels in the two countries
are equalized.
Achieving price level stability was a major reason why a country might adopt a commod-
ity standard such as the Gold Standard. Given that other countries, especially countries like
Britain that were important in international trade and finance, were on the gold standard,
there was another reason for a country to choose the gold standard. This reason was that the
gold standard would serve to maintain balance of payments equilibrium among the countries
that adopted it.
To see how, suppose that Country A was running a balance of payments surplus. Then
Country A would be experiencing a gold inflow. This gold inflow would increase its money
supply and increase its price level. The increase in the prices of its goods would tend to
make them less attractive to foreigners and, thereby, reduce its balance of payments surplus.
The reverse mechanism would work if a country were running a balance of payments deficit.
Further, the adjustment would be automatic. The gold flows induced by the trade imbalances
would lead to money supply changes that would lead to price changes that would undo the
trade imbalance.
The supposed automaticity of balance of payment adjustment under the gold standard
would have had the added benefit of removing the incentive for countries to change gold
content of their fiduciary currencies; i.e., to devalue or revalue their currencies, in order
7to achieve balance of payments surpluses or overcome balance of payments deficits. Any
short term effects of such actions would have been undone by the changes in gold flows they
effected.
2.3 Exchange Rate Determination
Achieving price level stability and having a mechanism that would work to automatically
reducing balance of payments surpluses and deficits were two reasons for adopting the gold
standard. However, according to the Macmillan Committee Report, which was written in
1931, “The primary objective of the international gold standard is to maintain a parity of
foreign exchanges within narrow limits; this has the effect of securing a certain measure of
correspondence in the levels of prices ruling all over the gold standard area.”9
To see how the gold standard would work to “maintain parity foreign exchanges,” which
I interpret to mean relative constancy of exchange rates, let there be two countries on the
gold standard each of which issues its own fiduciary currency. For convenience, call these
countries Canada and the UK. There is a spot market for the two currencies, and the spot
exchange rate is S = CAD/£. Further, let XCA be the mint price of the Canadian dollar
and XU K be the mint price of the UK pound. Recall that mint prices are in monetary
units/ounce gold.
Consider the question of when should Canadian citizens import gold from the UK. Cana-
dians could take 1 CAD to the spot market and get S1 pounds. They could then take these
pounds to the Bank of England and get SX1U K ounces of gold. Then, they could ship the gold
XCA
across the Atlantic Ocean, take it to Canadian Treasury, and get SX UK
Canadian dollars.
The alternative to using the CAD to buy gold is to buy a security that bears interest at the
rate iCA over the period that it takes to complete the transaction involving gold.10 Thus,
XCA
the importation of gold is profitable for the Canadians iff SX UK
> 1 + iCA + k, where k is the
proportional cost (cost per ounce of gold) of making the gold transaction. The cost k arises
because there are shipping, insurance, and time costs involved with importing or exporting
gold. The spot exchange rate
XCA 1
SCA =
XU K 1 + iCA + k
is known as the Canadian gold import point. For spot exchange rates less than SCA it
is profitable for Canadians to import gold from the UK. Of course, when there are many
countries on the gold standard, there is a gold import point for each pair.
Next, consider the question of when should UK citizens import gold from Canada. The
British could take 1£ to the spot market, get S CAD. They could then the Canadian dollars
S
to the Canadian Treasury and get xCA ounces of gold. They could then ship this gold across
the Atlantic Ocean, take it to the Bank of England, and get XCA XUS K £. Assume the British
citizens also have the alternative of buying securities that bear interest rate iU K . Then the
9
Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry, 1997, 247
10
This example is much like that of the price-specie flow mechanism except that instead of the alternatives
being buying domestic goods versus foreign goods, the alternative is which capital investment to make.
8SXU K
transaction is profitable if XCA
> 1 + iU K + k. The spot exchange rate
XCA
SU K = (1 + iU K + k)
XU K
is known as the UK gold import point. For spot exchange rates greater than SU K it is
profitable for British to import gold from Canada.
Putting the two gold points together yields a condition for no gold flows to occur. The
condition is that S satisfy11
XCA 1 XCAor export it to Country B and invest it there.12 If the agent invests domestically, the gold
earns rA , where, for the sake of explanation I assume that rA is the bank rate in Country A.
If the agent exports the gold to country B and invests it there, the gold earns rB − k, where
rB is the discount rate in Country B and k is the proportional cost of moving gold from
Country A to Country B. As long as rA > rB − k, gold will not be shipped out of Country A.
Therefore, the monetary authority in Country A had some latitude in lowering its discount
rate without suffering the deflationary consequences of gold flowing out of the country.
Using analogous reasoning, the monetary authority in Country A had some latitude in
raising its discount rate without suffering the inflationary consequences of gold flowing into
the country. Consider an agent in Country B who has one ounce of gold. This agent faces
the question whether to invest the gold domestically or export it to Country A. If the agent
invests domestically, the gold earns rB . If the agent exports the gold to country B, the gold
earns rA − k. As long as rB > rA − k, gold will not be shipped to Country A. Therefore, the
monetary authority in Country A had a constraint in raising its bank rate without suffering
the inflationary consequences of gold flowing into the country.
Combining these two arguments, the latitude that the monetary authority in Country A
had with regard to setting its bank rate was
rB − k < rA < rB + k (4)
| {z } | {z }
gold outflows gold inflows
Although monetary authorities had some ability to affect domestic interest rates, as the
argument above shows, the ability was limited by the possibility of gold flows. To see how
this worked, suppose, for example, a central bank wanted to stimulate the economy by
lowering the bank rate to encourage bank lending and investment. If it lowered its the bank
rate below rB − k , there would be loss of gold reserves by the banking system that could
make banks reluctant to increase their lending and would eventually cause them to reduce
lending and thereby decrease the money supply. In this way, the loss of reserves would offset
some of the effects of the lower bank rate. A central bank attempting to reduce inflationary
pressures in its economy faced the same type of constraints in the opposite direction is it
attempted to increase its bank rate by too much.
The restriction (4) also shows that countries also faced the consequences of discount
rate actions by taken monetary authorities in other countries. During the Classical Gold
Standard period, the major player was the Bank of England, and changes in its discount
rate had major effects on the gold reserves, and consequently the economies of the other
countries on the gold standard.
Lender of Last Resort
It was the ability of monetary authorities to issue fiduciary currencies that enabled them
to act as lenders of last resort, because these currencies could serve as reserves for the
banking system. The policy tools for acting as a lender of last resort were determination of
the collateral eligible for discounting and the haircut on that collateral.
12
The discussion of the mechanism here is similar to the discussion of the price-specie flow mechanism
except that here other side of the arbitrage is capital whereas it was commodities in the case of the price-
specie flow mechanism.
10A stylized description of how a central bank acted as lender of last resort in a financial
crisis under the gold standard is the following. A central bank set up reserve accounts for
financial institutions on its books. When financial institutions were facing deposit runs and
were in danger of running short of reserves in a crisis, a monetary authority could supply
financial institutions with reserves by purchasing (“discounting”) commercial paper from
them. The monetary authority made the discount by simply crediting the reserve accounts
these institutions had with them. They did not have to make the discount purchases by
paying out gold.
Should financial institutions have had to meet the withdrawal demands by depositors,
they would draw on their reserve account with the monetary authority and obtain the paper
form of the fiduciary currency. Because these fiduciary currencies were accepted as media of
exchange, they would satisfy depositors withdrawal demands.
Of course, because the fiduciary currencies had to be backed by gold, the ability of a
monetary authority to act of lender of last resort under the gold standard was not unlimited
as it almost is under a fiat monetary standard.13 However, there were cases the limits were
circumvented because central banks loaned gold to each other. An example: the Bank of
France loaned gold to the Bank of England during the Baring Crisis of 1890.14
2.5 “Rules of the Game”
If a country adopted the gold standard, its monetary authority was supposedly to follow
certain “rules of the game.” The usual specification of the “rules” applied to how monetary
authorities should adjust their bank rates in the face of persistent gold inflows or outflows.
The “rule” was that a country’s monetary authority was supposed to take actions to sup-
plement that effects that the gold inflows or outflows were having on the country’s balance
of payments.
Consider the case of persistent gold inflows and assume that they were due to Country A
running a balance of payments surplus. Without any central bank actions, the gold inflows
would have served to raise prices in Country A, which would have had the effect of reducing
the balance of payments surplus. Thus, as discussed above, there was automaticity of balance
of payments adjustment under the gold standard.
The “rule” in this case was that the central bank in Country A was supposed help the
balance of payments adjustment by lowering its discount rates. Lowering the discount rate
would have two effects. First, it would reduce the incentive for gold to flow into Country A.
Second, the lower interest rates would serve to stimulate the economy of Country A, which
would increase its imports and reduce its balance of trade surplus. Monetary authorities
were supposed to take the opposite action, increase bank rates, when experiencing persistent
gold outflows.
Of course, the incentives for central banks to take these actions were asymmetric. The
monetary authority of a country experiencing gold outflows had to raise interest rates. If it
13
I say almost because all fiat money economies have at least two equilibria, one of which is that the fiat
money is not valued. If agents in the economy expect that the amount of fiat money issued by the central
bank acting as lender of last resort would be too large, then the economy might switch to the equilibrium in
which the fiat money is not valued.
14
For a discussion of other instances of central banks lending gold to other central banks, see Eichengreen
(1992) loc. 1597 - 1648.
11did not do so, it faced the possibility of running out of gold and being unable to redeem its
fiduciary currency. The monetary authority of a country experiencing gold inflows faced no
such pressure.
The question of whether countries moved their discount rates as the “rules of the game”
required was explored extensively by Bloomfield (1959). Eichengreen and Flandreau (1997)
characterized his findings as:
[he] found that pre-World War I central banks violated those [“rules of the game”]
in the majority of years and countries he considered. Rather than draining liq-
uidity from the market when their reserves declined (and augmenting it when
they rose), they frequently did the opposite. (14)
Bordo and Kydland (1995) have argued that the was a second part to “rules of the game”
that applied to a country’s commitment to redeem its fiduciary currency under the Gold
Standard. When a country adopted the Gold Standard, it committed to redeem its fiduciary
currency in gold at the established mint ratio. However, Bordo and Kydland (1995) argued
this commitment was state-contingent. A country was permitted to suspend redemption in
the case of an exogenous emergency; e.g. war or if it were in danger of running out of gold
during a financial crisis. Once the emergency was over, the country was committed to restore
convertibility at pre-emergency parity.15 An example of this state-contingent commitment is
the actions of the Bank of England during the Napoleonic Wars. It suspended convertibility
of its paper pounds in 1797 and resumed convertibility at the old parity in 1821.
In the context of multiple countries on the gold standard, this commitment to restore
convertibility at par after suspensions meant that countries were implicitly agreeing to main-
tain close to fixed exchange rates and to not engage in competitive devaluations after the
emergency ended.
2.6 How the Gold Standard Worked in Practice
In this section, I examine how the gold standard performed with regard to achieving
price level stability and exchange rate stability. I also examine how countries performed
with respect to economic growth, and I present evidence on the frequency of financial crises
in countries that adopted the gold standard.
Price Level Stability
The price data for a sample of countries between 1880 and 1913 reveals four facts:
1. Countries experienced very little inflation when the period 1880 to 1913 is considered
as a whole. In the second column of Table 1, I show the average inflation rates for 11
15
This state-contingent commitment was similar to that which banks had with respect to redemption
their notes. They were permitted to suspend redemption in emergencies, such as bank panics which caused
runs on their specie holdings, but they were to resume redemption once the panic was over. The difference
between the commitment of banks and that of a country on the gold standard is that the banks’ commitment
was a legal requirement. Failure to resume meant that a bank would be put of out business. A country’s
commitment was more implicit.
12countries that were on the gold standard from 1880 to 1913.16
——————-Average——————
Country 1880 - 1913 1880 - 1895 1895 - 1913 Std. Dev.
Belgium 0.06 -1.87 1.67 3.79
Canada 0.77 -0.89 2.15 3.86
Denmark -0.25 -1.12 0.48 2.64
France 0.05 -0.53 0.74 3.43
Germany 0.42 -1.26 1.83 4.73
Netherlands 0.17 -0.53 0.74 1.93
Norway 0.62 -0.81 1.82 2.83
Sweden 0.29 -1.75 1.98 3.83
Switzerland -0.07 -1.92 1.47 3.81
United Kingdom -0.32 -2.35 1.38 3.88
United States -0.10 -1.31 1.45 2.00
Overall 0.19 -1.32 1.45 3.85
Table 1: Average and standard deviation of annual inflation for 11 Countries, 1880 - 1913
2. The lack of inflation between 1880 and 1913 was achieved by countries experiencing
deflation over the first part of the period and inflation over the remainder. The actual
behavior of the price levels of these same 11 countries is plotted in Figures 2 and 3, and
the average rates of inflation in the periods 1880 to 1895 and 1895 to 1913 are given
in the third and fourth columns of Table 1. From 1880 to 1895 countries experienced
deflation averaging between 0.53 percent (France) and 2.35 percent (United Kingdom).
From 1895 to 1913 they experienced inflation averaging between 0.53 percent (France,
again) and 2.15 percent (Canada).17 2
The change from deflation to inflation appears to have been due to an increase in the
rate of gold production, which is shown in Figure 4. The rate of increase in the world
stock of gold was less than two percent per year prior to 1892. However, the rate at
which the world gold stock increased was larger after that date, and, except for 1912,
was consistently above three percent per year from 1894 to 1913. The change in the
rate of gold production was due to the discovery of gold in South Africa (the Rand) in
1886 and the invention of the cyanide process for smelting gold in the late 1880s.
The change in the rate of gold production and the change in the rate of inflation before
and after 1895 accord reasonably well with the Quantity Theory. The average rate of
increase of the world gold stock between 1880 and 1895 was approximately 1.5 percent
per year. From 1895 to 1913, it was approximately 2.9 percent per year. If the change
in the world stock of gold is interpreted as ∆M in Equation (1), then the Quantity
Theory predicts that inflation should have increased by about 1.4 percent per year
16
All inflation rates are computed as 100 ∗ (ln(Pt ) − ln(P0 ))/t).
17
Although 1895 is not the year in which the price index is the lowest for all countries, I choose it as the
breakpoint because is the year with the minimum price level for the majority of countries considered.
13140
United
Kingdom
130
United
States
Belgium
120
Switzerland
Index,
1880
=
100
110
France
100
90
80
70
60
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
1915
Figure 2: Price levels in selected countries, 1880 -1913
140
Sweden
130
Netherlands
Canada
120
Norway
Germany
Index,
1880
=
100
110
100
90
80
70
60
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
1915
Figure 3: Price levels in selected countries, 1880 -1913
in the latter period over the earlier. This is bit below the difference in the overall
inflation rates in the last line of Table 1, but it must be remembered that this crude
calculation assumes that there was no change in the rate of output growth between
the two periods.
3. Overall, the price levels of the countries in Table 1 moved closely together. The average
of the correlations is 0.70 and the median is 0.76. However, a country-by-country
143.5
percentage
increase
in
world
gold
stock
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
1915
Figure 4: Percentage Change in the World Gold Stock, 1880 -1913
examination of the correlations given in Table 2 shows that price level movements
were closer for some countries than for others.
In Table 2, I have separated countries into blocks with correlations of 0.9 or greater.
Three blocks emerge: Block 1: the U.K., U.S., and Denmark; Block 2: Belgium and
Switzerland; Block 3: Sweden, Netherlands, Canada, Norway, and Germany. France
appears to be different from the other countries, so I keep it by itself.18
Table 2 and Figures 2 and 3 show the following. Blocks 1 and 2 appear highly correlated
with each other. This is shown in Figures 2. The price levels in these countries fall
until approximately 1895 and then rise until 1914, but only Belgium’s price level is
higher at the end of the period than it was in 1880. Blocks 2 and 3 also have price
levels that are highly correlated. However, the price levels in Blocks 1 and 3 are not
highly correlated.
4. There was a large amount of year-to-year fluctuation in annual inflation rates. This
is shown in the fifth column of Table 1 and Figures 5 and 6. The sample standard
deviations are between 2 and 5 percent.
5. Inflation rates among countries were not highly correlated, in general, as is shown for
11 countries in Table 3. The average of the correlations in the table is 0.43 and the
median is 0.45. These are much lower than the average and media for the price levels
of these countries. The table shows that inflation rates of the other countries in the
18
I have included Denmark in the U.K./U.S. since the pattern of its correlations with other countries is
most similar to that of those two countries. However, I have omitted it from Figure 2 because the figure was
getting crowded.
15United United Switzer-‐ Nether-‐
Kingdom States Denmark France Belgium land Sweden lands Canada Norway Germany
United
Kingdom x 0.92 0.93 0.78 0.83 0.82 0.67 0.57 0.51 0.45 0.39
United
States x 0.83 0.77 0.76 0.77 0.57 0.51 0.54 0.34 0.28
Denmark x 0.70 0.80 0.75 0.64 0.56 0.46 0.45 0.38
France x 0.64 0.63 0.53 0.43 0.47 0.45 0.32
Belgium x 0.92 0.93 0.87 0.79 0.79 0.76
Switzerland x 0.90 0.87 0.81 0.76 0.75
Sweden x 0.95 0.87 0.93 0.92
Netherlands x 0.90 0.91 0.90
Canada x 0.88 0.84
Norway x 0.91
Germany x
Table
2:
Price
level
correlations
for
selected
countries,
1880
-‐1913
1615
United
Kingdom
United
States
10
Belgium
Switzerland
France
5
0
-‐5
-‐10
-‐15
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
1915
Figure 5: Inflation rates for selected countries, 1880 -1913
15
Sweden
Netherlands
10
Canada
Norway
5
Germany
0
-‐5
-‐10
-‐15
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
1915
Figure 6: Inflation rates for selected countries, 1880 -1913
sample are mostly highly correlated with the British inflation. The table also shows
that France once again appears to be an outlier. It has the lowest correlations with
other countries in the sample. Further, in three cases (Netherlands, Switzerland, and
Canada) France’s inflation rate is slightly negatively correlated with the inflation rates
in those countries, although the correlations are so small as to be considered essentially
zero.
17United United Switzer-‐ Nether-‐
Kingdom States Denmark France Belgium land Sweden lands Canada Norway Germany
United
Kingdom x 0.58 0.53 0.32 0.65 0.50 0.74 0.57 0.56 0.81 0.72
United
States x 0.21 0.30 0.50 0.46 0.46 0.45 0.53 0.42 0.28
Denmark x 0.24 0.33 0.05 0.36 0.30 0.29 0.59 0.31
France x 0.37 -‐0.09 0.19 -‐0.12 -‐0.10 0.30 0.20
Belgium x 0.37 0.72 0.58 0.23 0.69 0.65
Switzerland x 0.54 0.61 0.45 0.41 0.58
Sweden x 0.66 0.20 0.75 0.75
Netherlands x 0.28 0.47 0.55
Canada x 0.42 0.27
Norway x 0.60
Germany x
Table
3:
Inflation
rate
correlations
for
selected
countries,
1880
-‐1913
Exchange Rate Stability
The second major reason for countries to adopt the gold standard was to achieve stability
of their exchange rate against those of other countries that also adopted the gold standard.
Given the closeness of the movements in the price indices of various countries, it would be
expected that exchange rates would be quite stable.
The empirical evidence bears out that this was in fact the case. In Figure 7 I plot the
premium, in percent of par, on the $ versus the CAD, the U.K. £, and the French franc.
The figure shows three points:
1. On average, exchange rates were close to their par values.19 The $ averaged a 0.025 per-
cent premium over the CAD and a 0.012 percent premium over the franc. It averaged
a 0.079 percent discount against the £.
2. The fluctuations in exchange rates were generally quite small. The standard deviation
of premia were only 0.104 percentage points, 0.234 percentage points, and 0. 353
percentage points for the CAD, £, and franc, respectively. Further, in only one case
was the premium on the $ greater than one-quarter of a percent against the CAD. It
was greater the greater than one-quarter percent in absolute value against the £ in 9
years, with the vast majority of cases (7) having the $ at a larger discount against the
£. Against the franc, the $ was at a discount or premium in almost half of the years
considered.
19
By par values I mean the value that would be given by the ratio of the quantity of pure gold in which
the currencies were defined. For example, the $ and the CAD were defined to equal to 1.50463 grams of
pure gold. Thus, their par value was 1. The £ was defined to equal 7.322381 grams of pure gold, so that the
ratios of the $ and the CAD to the £ was 4.86656331. Similarly, the French franc was defined to be equal
to 0.290322581 grams of pure gold, so that the ratio of the franc to the $ and CAD was 0.1929581.
181
0.8
percent
premium
on
$
agaainst
£
0.6
FF
CAD
0.4
0.2
0
-‐0.2
-‐0.4
-‐0.6
-‐0.8
-‐1
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
1915
Figure 7: Percentage premia of selected currencies against the dollar, 1880 -1913
3. The range of exchange rate fluctuations was directly related to the costs of undertaking
gold arbitrage. This range was the smallest for the $ and the CAD. The cost of gold
arbitrage between the United States and Canada was very small. The countries were
close together geographically, so the time and freight costs of shipping gold were quite
small. Further, it is likely that many Canadian dealers in gold maintained accounts
with banks in New York. The range was next smallest for the $ and the £. Although
separated by the Atlantic Ocean, which would have meant the physically transferring
gold that would have taken time and involved shipping costs, the financial markets of
the U.S. and the U.K. were closely connected. Further, London was the predominant
financial market at the time. The range was highest for the $ and the franc. The
physical transportation costs of getting gold from New York to Paris were at least as
large as getting it from New York to London, and Paris was a much less developed
financial market and the trade connections between the U.S. and France were not as
strong as those between the U.S. and the U.K..
Real Output Growth
Real output growth was strong in some countries and weak in some others under the
gold standard. The time series of real GDP for Canada, the U.S. the Netherlands, Norway,
the U.K. and France are plotted in Figure 8. Over the 33 year period shown in the figure,
Canada and the U.S. experienced strong growth. Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 4.41
percent in Canada and 3.45 percent in the U.S. during that time. However, real output
growth was much slower in the four European countries shown in the figure. Annual real
output growth averaged only 2.28 percent in the Netherlands, only 2.18 percent in Norway,
only 1.79 percent in the U.K., and a meager 1.28 percent in France.
19Annual rates of real GDP growth were not highly correlated among the six countries
shown in Figure 8. The highest correlation was 0.46 between annual rates of output growth
in Canada and the U.S. The only other strong correlations were 0.41 between the U.K. and
the U.S., and 0.40 between the U.K. and the Netherlands. Some of my results agree with
those of Easton (1984).20 He finds the same order of magnitude correlations for real output
for Canada - U.S. and U.K. - U.S. However, unlike Easton (1984), I find no correlation of
real output annual growth rates between the U.S. and Norway. Further, I find no correlation
of annual real output growth rate between any pairs of France, the Netherlands, Norway.
450
400
Canada
US
Netherlands
350
Norway
Real
GDP
(1880
=
100)
UK
300
France
250
200
150
100
50
1875
1880
1885
1890
1895
1900
1905
1910
1915
Figure 8: Real GDP in Selected Countries, 1880 -1913
Financial Crises
To determine the likelihood of financial crises under the gold standard, I use the data on
banking crises from Reinhart-Rogoff Table A.3.1. The data show that financial crises were
quite likely:
1. At least one country had a banking crises in about a third of the years during the
period 1880 to 1913. According to the Reinhart - Rogoff data, there were banking
crises in 1880, 1882, 1885, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1897, 1898, 1901, and 1907 in one or more
countries that were on the gold standard at the time. In most cases, the banking crisis
was only in a single country. However, in 1891, 1892, and 1897 more than one country
experienced a banking crises, and in 1907 there were banking crises in five countries.21
20
Easton (1984) computes his correlations using “annual deviation of the log of actual GNP from the log
of (exponential) trend GNP.” (516) He also relies on different sources for his real output data.
21
The Reinhart - Rogoff table lists 8 other countries that experienced banking crises between 1880 and
1913. However, I have been unable to determine whether these countries were on the gold standard at the
time the crisis occurred. Therefore, these crises are not included in my calculations.
20Years on Number of Years on Number of
gold banking gold banking
standard crises standard crises
Austria-Hungary 18 0 Italy 20 2
Argentina 17 0 Netherlands 34 1
Belgium 34 0 Norway 34 1
Brazil 9 0 Portugal 11 1
Canada 34 0 Russia 17 0
Denmark 34 2 Sweden 34 2
France 34 2 Switzerland 34 0
Germany 34 2 United Kingdom 34 1
Greece 4 0 United States 34 3
Table 4: Number of banking crises in countries on the gold standard
2. There was a 50/50 chance that a country would experience a banking crisis while on
the gold standard. In the table below, I present a list of 18 countries that were on the
gold standard during this period. The shows that 9 countries had at least one crises,
5 had two crises, and the United States had three.
However, this discussion is not to imply that financial crises were due to countries be-
ing on the gold standard. Financial crises have occurred in all financial systems, whether
commodity-backed or fiat, in which financial institutions have demand liabilities that are
not matched by assets with the same maturity.
2.7 Summary
The consensus is that during the Classical Gold Standard period, 1880 - 1914, the gold
standard performed quite well. As the evidence given above shows, it provided for price level
and exchange rate stability and for reasonably good real output growth. One argument for
why the gold standard worked so well during this period is given by Kindleberger (1973).
He argues that the success of the gold standard was due to the effective management of the
Bank of England. Specifically, the Bank of England “increased its foreign lending whenever
economic activity turned down, damping rather than aggravating the international business
cycle” and “by acting as international lender of last resort.” (Eichengreen (1992) loc. 471)
Eichengreen (1992) has a different view.
The stability of the prewar gold standard was instead the result of two very differ-
ent factors: credibility and commitment.. . . The credibility of the gold standard
derived from the priority attached by governments to the maintenance of balance-
of-payments equilibrium. In the core countries – Britain, France, and Germany –
there was little doubt that the authorities ultimately would take whatever steps
were required to defend the central bank’s gold reserves and maintain the convert-
ibility of the currency into gold.. . . The very credibility of the official commitment
to gold meant that this commitment was rarely tested. (loc. 484)
21He goes on to argue that this commitment was not on a country-by-country basis.
Ultimately, however, the credibility of the prewar gold standard rested on inter-
national cooperation. When stabilizing speculation and domestic intervention
proved incapable of accommodating a disturbance, the system was stabilized
through cooperation among governments and central banks. (loc. 523)
3 The Bitcoin Standard
In order to set the stage for a discussion of how monetary policy might be conducted
under my imagined bitcoin standard and what the outcomes might be in terms of price
levels, exchange rates, real output and financial crises, in this section I discuss the bitcoin
standard in more detail. I also highlight the ways in which it is similar to and different from
the gold standard.
3.1 Details
Under the bitcoin standard, a country may or may not have its own monetary unit.
The analysis does not to any extent depend on which choice countries make. If a country
does choose to have its own monetary unit, then it would be defined to equal some amount
of bitcoin. Throughout the rest of this discussion, I assume that countries have their own
monetary unit.
Bitcoin
The media of exchange under the bitcoin standard would differ from those under the
gold standard. One difference is that there would be no coins. Instead, there would be
bitcoin. The rationale for coins is that “raw” gold is not a convenient medium of exchange.
The weight and fineness of the amount of gold being offered in a transaction have to be
verified, which can be time consuming and costly. These costs were reduced by governments
establishing mints that produced coins of a known weight and fineness. In contrast, a bitcoin
is a bitcoin. There are no differences in weights or fineness of different bitcoin. And payments
and P2P transfers can be made with bitcoin
Central Bank or Treasury Fiduciary Currency
It is possible that the bitcoin standard could exist without each country’s monetary
authority issuing a fiduciary currency. Nonetheless, I assume that monetary authorities
would choose to issue fiduciary currencies in order to have the ability to finance fiscal deficits
through money creation.
Thus, I assume that in addition to bitcoin, the addresses in the decentralized ledger, there
would be Bank of Canada dollars, Federal Reserve dollars, ECB euros, Bank of England
pounds, and so forth.22 These central bank currencies would be separate currencies that
circulate along side bitcoin. They would be tied to bitcoin because they would be redeemable
22
If a countries did not have their own monetary units, there would be Bank of Canada bitcoin, Federal
Reserve bitcoin, ECB bitcoin, Bank of England bitcoin, and so forth.
22in bitcoin on demand. These central bank currencies would be fiduciary because the central
banks would not fully back their issues with bitcoin, just as under the gold standard central
banks did not fully back their note issues with gold.
My expectation is that these fiduciary currencies would be liabilities on the balances
sheet of the central banks and would appear under two headings, just as fiduciary currencies
did under the gold standard and fiat currencies do today. The first heading would be the
accounts that central banks set up on their ledges for banks in their countries. These accounts
would be denominated in terms of the central banks’ individual currencies would exist solely
on the ledger of the central bank; they would not be part of the decentralized bitcoin block
chain. Commercial banks could use the accounts for settlement or reserve purposes similar
to how today banks in Canada use the Deposit account at the Bank of Canada labelled
“Members of the Canadian Payments Association” and banks in the U.S. use the account
at the Federal Reserve Banks labelled “Term deposits held by depository institutions.”
The second heading on the balance sheets would be one that pertains to the fiduciary
currency that was in circulation in the hands of the nonbank public. These accounts would be
similar to the Bank of Canada’s “Bank notes in circulation” and the Federal Reserve Banks’
“Federal Reserve notes” headings. Under the bitcoin standard the form of the fiduciary
currency in circulation with the nonbank public could be in paper (or plastic or perhaps
some metallic alloy like today’s coins) and/or digital form.
The redemption of these fiduciary currencies would mean transferring bitcoin from the
central bank’s “wallet ” to the “wallet” of the commercial bank or person requesting the
withdrawal rather than transferring gold coin or bullion as was the case under the gold
standard.
Of course, there are issues involved in the issuance of central bank non-digital currencies,
such as the choice of the minimum denomination and of the number of denominations. How-
ever, although these choices are significant, they would not affect how the bitcoin standard
would work.
Commercial Bank Fiduciary Currency
Under the bitcoin standard the private banking system would continue to exist and would
engage in maturity transformation in the sense that it would not hold assets with the same
maturities as its liabilities. However, there a question about whether or not banks would
issue liabilities that were callable. In other words, there is a question of whether banks would
still issue bank notes or deposits. I assume that they would.
Which leaves two questions to be answered. The first is, In what would the bank notes
or deposits be redeemable? There are three possibilities:
1. Central bank fiduciary currency (for ease of exposition call them dollars) only. Banks’
reserves against these deposits would be dollar deposits at the central bank and dollars
held in their vault (vault cash). Banks would not have to hold any bitcoin reserves
against these accounts because they are not required to pay out bitcoin. Clearing
would be done very much clearing is done with checks today.
2. Bitcoin only. Banks’ reserves against bitcoin deposits would be held in “wallets” in
which they hold bitcoin. It is part of my vision that these bank “wallets” would be
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